Vivid confirmation of the arrival of a major chronicler of those who live on or beyond the margins of the American...
A dozen unforgettable reports from the underbelly of American life, from Vanity Fair contributing editor Wright (Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War, 2004).
Shunning the “gonzo journalism” tag associated with the late Hunter S. Thompson, Wright notes that his work “has always been to focus on my subjects in all their imperfect glory.” Well, almost: Two essays deal with Wright’s adventures a decade ago in the pornography industry, at Hustler and at Internet Entertainment Group, where he worked for Seth Warshavsky, “the first and greatest con artist of the digital era.” That background, along with his past struggles with drugs and alcohol, dissolves some of the traditional distance between reporter and subject. Whether covering skateboarders, Seattle anti-globalism protestors and ecoterrorists, neo-Nazis or peddlers of human-growth hormone, Wright investigates what he calls “rejectionists” of the American Dream without romanticizing or condescending. He may not approach these outsiders and misfits with the kind of raffish affection displayed by legendary New Yorker nonfiction chroniclers Joseph Mitchell and A.J. Liebling, but Wright’s reports are every bit as memorable. His Mötley Crüe profile depicts the heavy-metal group as more cretinous than the fictional Spinal Tap. The quotes are frequently profane and virtually always pungent—for example, former Hollywood agent and sometime substance abuser Pat Dollard, ready to start bingeing again, urges the author: “Let’s take ten grand, go to Las Vegas, get a bunch of hookers and blow, and have fun for a few days”—and Wright’s sensory descriptions are searing, as when he evokes the discomfort of American soldiers in Afghanistan: “The first hot winds of the morning bear an overwhelming smell of raw sewage, spiced with the odor of disinfectant from the latrines outside the tent, not to mention occasional gusts of diesel fuel blowing off the line of helicopters on the nearby runway.”
Vivid confirmation of the arrival of a major chronicler of those who live on or beyond the margins of the American mainstream.Pub Date: April 7, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-15574-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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